Abstract

Nurse prescribing is one of the most radical, and controversial, developments in nursing in recent decades. O’Dowd (2007) summed up the contrasting views that surround the topic by stating that ‘the nursing profession believes it can help speed up and improve patient care by giving nurses the power to complete episodes of care. Some parts of the medical profession, however, believe it can cause thousands of deaths’. Despite this climate of uncertainty and debate, nurses have taken on the challenge of extending their roles and this article is a reflective account of the introduction and evaluation of supplementary nurse prescribing (SNP) in a specialist Alzheimer’s disease treatment service (ADTS).